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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26224123">Give Up a Fiery Sword and Gain a Hearth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl'>AstroGirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Belonging, Gen, chosen family</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 09:00:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>367</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26224123</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hosts of Heaven do not constitute a family.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale &amp; Humanity, Implied Aziraphale/Crowley - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>74</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Trope Bingo: Round Fifteen</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Give Up a Fiery Sword and Gain a Hearth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My last fill for Round 15 of Trope Bingo, for the prompt "Chosen Family."</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Hosts of Heaven do not constitute a family.  They honor the Almighty as their Creator and their Lord, but they do not think of Her as a parent.  Not even Aziraphale, who, for all his millennia among humans, has never felt entirely comfortable taking up their custom of referring to Her as "Father" (or, occasionally, "Mother").</p><p>It is true that Gabriel has, in recent times, taken to alternating the word "family" with his previously preferred term, "team," but he has obviously picked that up from some lamentable human management book, and he seems to have very little understanding of what it actually means.</p><p>The truth is, there were no families in the universe, until Adam and Eve created one.  And no angel ever understood the concept, until one sat beside a fire with a man and a woman and their tumbling, laughing children, and felt among them a kind of love he had never sensed before, one that made him glow with warmth and second-hand happiness, and yet, at the same time, stirred in him an unfamiliar and unangelic twinge of envy.</p><p>Even then, he might not have understood it, not as humans do, until they pressed into his hands a portion of the food they had struggled to produce, insisting he share, and called him, as he ate, "our brother."</p><p>He has marveled, ever since, at the depth and breadth of this love the humans have created for themselves, at its ability to encompass anyone they choose.  Even a being as unlike them as an angel.</p><p>And he has learned from them.  Every moment, for six millennia, he has learned.</p><p>**</p><p>The Hosts of Heaven do not constitute a family.  And so, when Aziraphale is severed from them for good, he does not lose a family.</p><p>He doesn't think about this as he sits, his fingers entwined with those of a being unlike him, watching humans pass by the windows of his shop in the soft light of a summer evening and silently blessing the ones who do so hand-in-hand.  </p><p>But he might, perhaps, remember in that moment the warmth of a long-ago fire outside the gates of Eden, and the family who welcomed him home.</p>
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